Intersectionality, at its simplest, refers to the multiple social discriminations and prejudices that ‘intersect’ with one another to further exclude a person from full participation in society. A woman in modern society experiences enough sexism and prejudice, but being a black woman experiences both race and gender discrimination. Religious, gender, language and class further intersect with these issues and reinforce the exclusion and prejudice. Having multiple identities is now considered to be well understood, but the idea is more about how the structures of society control and discipline these multiple identities is still quite contested. Giddens describes this as “the complex interweaving of diverse social inequalities which shapes individual lives and complicates the earlier, comparatively simple class analysis” (Giddens, 2013;489)
This whole debate arises in circumstances where academics and activists were trying to develop their thoughts, and make progress in their respective areas of work, but in doing so (inadvertently, I would say) denied the influence or relevance of another person’s experience. So, feminists denied the role of race in their discourse, or marxists were so focussed on their class conflict analysis of society, that the lived experiences of homosexual oppression was not recognised. for example, when sociologists discuss the experience of the ‘working class’, who is left out? Are women included in that ‘working-class’? What about black men? Can we assume that the lived experience of a single-parent black lesbian hairdresser is sufficiently similar to a white and married coal-miner for us to usefully categorise them both as ‘working-class’?
Let’s listen to the person who coined the term.
This is a link to the paper that she wrote on the topic http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1052&context=uclf
So, what are we aiming for? What is the purpose of all this sociological analysis? What is the point? There are three points, in my opinion. The first is that we can become aware of the ‘lenses’ through which we see and judge the world around us, what we do with the privilege and social capital that we may enjoy without realising it, and the thirdly is that we can begin to tackle the structures of power and oppression to achieve equity.
Lenses
Like a pair of virtual reality goggles, the ‘sociological lenses’ allows us to see hidden structures, processes and ways of thinking (governmentality) that reproduce and amplify individual prejudices.One of the central tenets of Marxist theory is that classes in positions of power attempt to suppress, control and oppress competing ideologies to ensure their continuing access to power. Self-interest dictates that competing explanations of reality be suppressed (Ressler and Hodge, 2006). We begin to see how individuals might not be personally prejudiced, but the institutions and cultural norms that they take for granted add up to discrimination and oppressive outcomes. When we can ‘see’ these structures we are in a better position to dismantle those structures.
Privilege
These social norms that have developed over the centuries add up and give certain people advantages over others, regardless of their individual or personal skills or qualities. Whilst the American constitution claims that all are ‘born equal’, certain people are actually born ‘more equal’ than others. They may have parents who have a better education or more money because of their own hard work, but they also may have been born into a group that achieved their advantage through war, violence, theft or oppression. The children may not be oppressive, but their inheritance is. It is a lie that everyone is born equal. We all have different starting points, different amounts of ‘social capital’ (Bourdieu, 2011) or privilege (McIntosh, 1988). Even if we are born with different levels of social capital, we also get offered different amounts of capital/privilege throughout our life, even if we don’t ask for it.
American sociologist Michael S. Kimmel (2009) describes the state of having privilege as being “like running with the wind at your back”, unaware of invisible sustenance, support and propulsion. This is described by McIntosh as a knapsack (a rucksack) of privilege. McIntosh’s work is not intersectional, so she is mostly interested in ‘race’, but privilege extends to all the sociological lenses we have looked at.
Equity
Much of professional social work discourse is focussed on equality. There has been a lot of work done on developing ‘equalities’ law and policy to ensure that everyone is treated equally, but this doesn’t really account for the disparities of privilege and social capital. There are three types of equality: equality of status where we are all deemed to be ‘born equal’, equality of opportunity, where we give everyone an equal chance regardless of their privilege, and equality of condition, where we create a ‘level playing field’.
If we take into account the privilege or social capital that some groups will have other others, we could instead try and achieve equity (Dalton, 2013) where each person ‘must end up with the same amount regardless of the fairness’.
This has been popularly illustrated by this image:
Although this image suggests that we are tackling natural biological differences in height, we are also (with a sociological) lense addressing privilege. The boy in the blue t-shirt is not taller by accident of biology- he could have the advantages of a better fed and better-educated upbringing and ancestry. He doesn’t experience this advantage himself, and he won’t have chosen to exercise his privilege personally, but he does benefit from it.
Equity, then, is being unfair but with the view to achieving ultimate equality.
References
Bourdieu, P. (2011). The forms of capital.(1986). Cultural theory: An anthology, 81-93.
Crenshaw, Kimberle (1 January 1989). “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics”. The University of Chicago Legal Forum. 140: 139–167
Conley, Dalton (2013). You May Ask Yourself (3rd ed.). New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Kimmel, Michael S. (2009). Privilege: A Reader. Westview Press. pp. 1, 5, 13–26
McIntosh, P. (1988). White privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack. Race, class, and gender in the United States: An integrated study, 4, 165-169.
Ressler, L & Hodge, D (2006) Religious Discrimination in Social Work, Journal of Religion & Spirituality in Social Work: Social Thought, 24:4, 55-74,
